2. Find Your Neighbourhood

The neighbourhood that you choose to operate your food tour business must be selected carefully.

It is important to choose a neighbourhood:

That is beautiful to walk around: Try choosing a neighbourhood that is pleasant to walk around in and one that contains other tourist attractions. This will keep your food tours diverse and the customers engaged.

Where the restaurants and cafes are at a walkable distance: Strategically choose the location of the restaurants on your food tour. You ideally want resturants close enough together so that customers don’t have to do too much walking, but also far enough a part so that they have time to digest their food between places.

Where the food is excellent: Last but most certainly not least, it’s very important that the neighbourhood you choose contains lots of delicious food!

Here is a map of a food tour in East London. The restaurants are located close together and there are historical sites along the way.

4.Reach Out To Local Restaurants

Now for the most delicious part of planning a food tour- reaching out to local restaurants and tasting the food!

Choose restaurants based on:

Quality of food

Ambience

Prices

Service

Location

Your niche

Once you’ve decided which restaurant you would like featured on your food tour, speak with the owner to see if it’s possible.

Explain to him or her why having the restaurant featured on the food tour would be beneficial for business.

For example, explain that the food tour will give their business exposure to new clients, free marketing, and new avenues to generate profit.

5. Set Up Equipment And Staff

Running a food tour business involves very few start up costs – your main tools include a computer, a website and a tour guide.

Eventually you may need to hire staff to assist with the tours, but if the business is small one person can give the tours.

If you do hire staff, make sure that they have high energy, make the customers feel comfortable, and are well organized and responsible. You may want to consider using a service like BeABetterGuide.com in order to do your guide training.

6.Market Your Business

Starting a food tour business is one thing, getting it to grow into a successful business is another.

It’s important to spend a lot of time marketing your food tour business because travelers will mainly hear about it through word of mouth and internet reviews.

Try:

Inviting local foodies for free tours: Ask them to post some pictures or write testimonials.

Contacting influencers and bloggers: Ask them to write an article or record a video about the tour.

7.Launch Your Business

Now that you have everything you need to successfully operate a food tour business, it’s time to launch!

Make sure that you start your food tour business off strong by having everything organized and ready to go.

Make sure:

The food tour is easy to book: Sometimes it can take up to 10 back-and-forth emails to book a tour. Make the experience seamless and simple for your customers by installing a booking software like Rezgo.

Influencers are talking about your food tour: Remember, the best way to market your food tour is through word-of-mouth marketing.

To send a pre-tour email to your customers: Send an email explaining what customers should bring on the tour. For example, comfortable shoes, a bottle of water, and some cash.

Now that the food tour has launched, here are a few post-launching steps to remember:

8.Maintain Your Business to Business Relationships

The core workings of a food tour business are the relationships with local restaurant owners and staff members. It’s important to maintain these relationships to continuously improve the food tour experience.

Once a few tours have been conducted, ask the restaurant owner and staff for their feedback.

Ask questions like:

How can the food tour be improved?

What can our food tour business do differently?

What is our food tour business good at?

How did your staff enjoy participating in the food tour?

9.Be Innovative

With low barriers of entry, the food tour industry can easily become over-saturated with competition.

Therefore, it’s important to stay on top of things and to continuously be innovative with your business.

Kat Kinsman, a food and drinks editor for extra crispy, mentions Lesley Tellez’s Mexican breakfast sandwiches to spread the word about her cooking and her culinary tour Eat Mexican Culinary Tour. This is a great new avenue of advertisement that Lesley is taking advantage of.

Conclusion

So why should your tour or activity company start a food tour business?

Food tour businesses have low start up costs, are becoming an increasingly popular trend among travelers, and are great for the community.

Also remember that food tour businesses have high competition, require innovation and require lots of marketing efforts.

But overall, starting a food tour business is a great way to generate extra profit for your tour or activity business.

The 10 steps to starting a food tour business summarized:

Find Your Niche

Find Your Neighbourhood

Make A Food Tour Business Plan

Reach Out To Local Restaurants

Set Up Equipment And Staff

Market Your Business

Launch Your Business

Maintain Your B2B Relationships

Be Innovative

Bonus

Are you a food tour operator or have you included a food tour into your tour offerings? Let us know if you have any tips or advice for operators that are thinking about getting into food tourism. Add your comments or advice in the comments section. Bon Appetite!

Related

Stephen is the CEO and Co-Founder of Rezgo. He has been working as a travel & tourism technology consultant since 1995. Stephen is active in fostering tourism technology and is a Past Chair of the OpenTravel Alliance. He is also a regular contributor for Tnooz, a leading travel technology media site, and speaks regularly at conferences around the Globe on travel & tourism technology, messaging standards, and industry trends.